Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849 to 1936) was a Russian and Soviet experimental neurologist and physiologist, born in Ryazan as the eldest of ten children of a village priest. He left the theological seminary for natural science, studied at the University of Saint Petersburg and the Medical Military Academy, and worked in Germany with Carl Ludwig and in the Heidenhain laboratories in Breslau, where he perfected the technique of the exteriorized stomach pouch that came to bear his name. From 1891 he organized and directed the physiology department of the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Saint Petersburg, which under his direction became one of the most important centres of physiological research in the world. Pavlov kept dogs alive for long chronic experiments instead of ending them in acute vivisection, and his work on the digestive glands earned him the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, making him the first Russian laureate. He is best known for classical conditioning, which grew almost by accident out of those digestion experiments. He also studied temperament and the properties of the nervous system, and he kept his independence of mind under the Soviet government until his death in 1936.